ERP for Distribution/Light Manufacturing

We have looked at Syspro, Sage 100, and Prophet 21. The demos were very similar. I've read enough posts here to know you all know the pricing so you know Prophet 21 was the most expensive, Syspro the least (when you count maintenance agreements). Our choice comes down to service and ease of use. What are your experiences with their support? How customizable are they without having to pay the VAR again and again? Thank you for all of your input.

Take a look at XimpleTM it is as good or better in many aspects that the
ones in your list plus it is easy to learn ... price wise it's the lowest
TCO in the market. Take a look at the CLOUD offering, by far BEST VALUE
out there.

Depending on good the VAR is you are dealing with, Syspro would be a good fit in Distribution and light Mfg. However one caveat is their 12% maintenance. It does not include hot line support and if you stop paying, you lose the software.

We have worked with Sage and its predecessors for more than 25 years now. More recently the product requires much less customization than it did in the early years, and the software is designed so that many customizations to fields, screens and reports survive upgrades with minimal rework. They now have a full SQL version as well.

Lot traceability is built in, but you will probably want a bar coding solution in conjunction with the ERP to keep up with the volume of transactions that lot tracking requires, and that will be a third party product. Scanco has been in that space for a long time.

LTL shipping and EDI also require 3rd party solutions, and there have been a lot of improvements in that space as well.

The real question is how much customization will you need. Feel free to make everyone demonstrate how the unmodified product meets your business requirements to get a better sense of what you will need the var for. Typically however the rule of thumb is 1.5 to 2 times software cost for var implementation, customization and training in most software.